Back to Basics
by EldritchSandwich
Summary: Change of Heart Series 13. Everyone encounters new frontiers, from Jeremie's wilderness adventure, to Mr. Ishiyama's role in the Gang, to Odd and Sissi's first date...


Sissi groaned softly as she leaned back against the school wall, squinting against the setting sun. Odd opened his eyes and straightened his back against the massive elm tree. "Rough day?"

"We did calisthenics in gym. I'm sore and I'm exhausted." Odd smiled and turned back to watch the motes of dust float across his vision. Sissi sidled along the wall, inching in his direction. "Listen, I was thinking, maybe we could do something this weekend. Go see a movie?"

Odd looked over at her. The light seemed to split her face in two- half aglow with the late afternoon, half speckled with the shadow of the trees. He nodded. "Yeah, that would be good."

"Saturday, say around three?"

"Sure."

"All right. It's a date."

Odd sighed and turned back toward the woods. "Yeah, I guess it is."

Sissi crawled closer and tried to meet his eyes. "Are you okay?"

Odd shrugged. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"You're not going to run away on me again, are you?"

Odd chcukled and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "I promise."

"Well, that's not good enough." Yumi spun around, grinning.

Ulrich spun his head up back to look up at the sun. "Well, then what do you want?"

"I want my dad to have the passcode for the elevator."

Ulrich stopped walking. "You mean, let him go to the lab whenever he wanted."

"He can help us, you know that."

Ulrich swung his hands up into hers. "It's not my decision. Jeremy would probably have us vote."

Yumi drew closer. "I know. I'm just winning you over now because you're so easy to manipulate." She brushed her lips against his and grinned.

Ulrich chuckled. "Well, I'm not going to argue with that." He drew in for another kiss.

"Hey, you two, this isn't a dance club. Do that on your own time!"

They pulled apart, blushing but smiling. Yumi bit her lower lip. "You're right, Jim. We don't want to set a bad example for the seventh graders."

Jim grunted, shook his head, and trudged off. He stopped in mid-stride, and turned back. "Uh, as an educator, I really should have said not to do that on your own time, either."

Ulrich nodded. "We won't tell."

"Why not?" Jeremie squinted into the laptop screen to see Aelita's image shrug.

"Some of the data paths aren't accepting your code."

"All right, I'm going to try to go around them." As he typed in the code, he shook his head frustratedly. "This should have worked already."

Aelita smiled sadly. "Jeremie, I can still come out whenever I want. Don't physically assault yourself over this. You couldn't have known about Xana's virus."

Jeremie squinted. "I think the phrase you're looking for is 'beat yourself up', Aelita. And I should have known. This is what I'm good at. The computer things, the science things."

"Maybe if you found something else you could be good at, you wouldn't need to…beat yourself up."

Jeremie shook his head. "Like what? Soccer, where I get kicked into the goal? Parties, where I get headaches from the music?"

"Everyone has to try new things, Jeremie. I learned swimming, didn't I?"

If Jeremie hadn't been so weary from his programming failures, he would have laughed. He could almost see Aelita thrashing about in the water, a terrified look on her face, Odd and Ulrich hovering around her in case she really started to panic. "Yeah, after Yumi and Sissi lifted you up and tossed you into the pool."

"Then maybe that's what you need, Jeremie. For someone to throw you in the pool."

Jeremie had the perfect comeback, but when he opened his mouth, he didn't say it. Instead, a strange ringing sound came out. He started in surprise. Of course, it wasn't him. It was the phone. He picked up the cell and pressed the Talk button. "Hello?" Aelita leaned around to the edges of her screen, as if a change of view would let her hear the words coming through the other end. "No, it…it's great to hear from you. Well, no, I hadn't made plans or anything. Really? That's great. Oh, well…I don't know. Um…can I call you back?" Aelita mouthed the word 'what?' but Jeremie waved her off. "Yeah, goodbye to you too." He pressed the button and placed the phone back on his desk.

"Jeremie, what is it."

Jeremie cleared his throat and leaned back in the chair, his face blank. "My parents are coming back for the weekend."

"Well, that's wonderful!"

"It's not that wonderful, Aelita."

"But, from what you told me, I thought you loved them."

"I do, but…Aelita, we're…

"We're going camping!"

…

"Camping? You mean out in the woods, with tents and wild animals and singing around the fire?" Sissi leaned back against the far wall of the dorm room.

"Yeah, that's the idea." Jeremie paused, his socks still half way between his dresser and the duffel bag. "Except for the singing." He slid the last pair of socks into the bag. "Probably."

Ulrich twirled the computer chair around to face them. "Well, I think it's great. It'll give you a chance to work on some muscle tone."

"Well I don't think it's great, Ulrich. What if Xana pops up and I'm not there?"

Odd flopped back on Jeremie's bed, making the rest of Jeremie's as-yet-unpacked possessions hop into the air. "Oh, Yumi can work the computer, Einstein, don't worry about it. Just have a good time."

"It's not really my idea of a good time."

Yumi smiled and eased herself against the wall next to Sissi. "Have you ever been camping before?"

Jeremie shrugged. "Once, when I was six. I was bitten by a marmot."

"Well, you're a big, tough teenager now, Jeremie. I'm sure the marmots will take one look at you and run the other way."

"Very funny, Odd."

Ulrich chuckled. "Yeah, unless it's one of those new giant attack marmots the military's been working on."

"Would you let me pack, please?"

Sissi pushed herself off the wall. "Yeah, come on guys, let's go wait for Jeremie's parents to get here, so we can make them tell us all sorts of embarrassing things about him."

Jeremie shook his head as he guided the giggling posse out the door. "Just so long as you go."

Yumi turned as they walked off. "We'll be downstairs to say goodbye!"

Jeremie grinned and waved back, then slid the door closed. He shut his eyes and sighed. It would be nice to get out of the city for a weekend. Get back to nature, away from all the hustle and bustle and responsibility. That's right, Jeremie, he thought. Just keep telling yourself that.

Odd tapped Ulrich on the shoulder. "Hey, what are you guys doing Saturday afternoon?"

Ulrich glanced over at Yumi, who had walked ahead with Sissi. "Oh, nothing special. Why?"

"Well, Sissi and I are going to a movie, and…"

"And you don't want it to be a date."

Sissi's cheeks reddened a little. "It's not that I don't want it to be, it's just that, with all we've been through, I'm not sure how fast to go."

Yumi sighed. "All right, I'll talk Ulrich into going. But eventually, you just have to jump in."

Odd rolled his head back across his shoulders. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Just not yet. Okay?"

Ulrich shook his head. "All right, we'll be there."

"Great." Odd jogged forward to Sissi, while Yumi slipped back toward Ulrich. "Hey, Sissi, about the movie Saturday…"

"Oh, yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that."

"Okay…you want to go first?"

"Oh, no, you can go first."

"No, I insist, go ahead."

Yumi shot Ulrich a knowing glance. He rolled his eyes.

"No, really, after you…"

…

"We're going into the mountains. One of my friends at work gave me directions to a spot that he says is absolutely beautiful."

Jeremie nodded, staring out the window as the outskirts of the city rushed by. His mother leaned back over the passenger seat. "Jeremie, honey, is everything okay?"

He smiled thinly. "Yeah, Mom, I'm fine. Just thinking."

His father grinned. "Cut that out, young man. The whole reason we're doing this is so you can stop thinking for a few days." Jeremie's smile dripped off. His father tried to make it sound like that was a good thing. Jeremie's mother tapped his father on the shoulder and gestured back toward the passenger compartment. The middle-aged man cleared his throat. "So, how's school going?"

Jeremie shrugged. "Great."

"How are your friends?"

"Good."

His mother turned back again. "So, is there…a special girl, maybe…"

"Mom!"

"Sorry, sorry, I just…I feel like we never get to talk. You're always so busy with science things and those robotics competitions…but that's good. That you have interests."

Jeremie rolled his eyes and settled back against the seat. Why didn't they let him bring his laptop? He could have talked to Aelita, or at least kept abreast of what was going on at home. Oh, right. Roughing it. "So, how long until we get to the campsite?"

His father shrugged. "About four hours."

Jeremie groaned to himself.

Ulrich slid onto the park bench next to Yumi, handing her an ice cream cone that had already started to melt. She took it and tested the temperature with her tongue. She nursed the cone for a few moments, then turned to Ulrich. "So, I'd be willing to bet that Odd invited you to a movie tomorrow."

Ulrich chuckled and nodded. "Yeah. Sissi too, huh?"

Yumi nodded. "Yup." She licked a long trail in the ice cream. "We're not going."

"Oh, I know." Ulrich took a large, wet bite out of his own ice cream. "Those two just have to take the plunge."

"Right. Then, they can have a strong, healthy relationship like ours, based on trust and respect." Yumi glanced up. Ulrich was looking at her strangely. "What? Oh, no, I sound like a TV psychiatrist, don't I?"

Ulrich laughed. "No, it's…it just would have been much more convincing if you didn't have ice cream on your nose."

Yumi reached up and felt the damp, cold patch on the tip of her nose. "Oh, can you give me a napkin?"

Ulrich set his own cone down and turned toward her face. "No, it's all right, I'll get it…"

Yumi giggled and tried to push him away. "Don't you dare…Ulrich. Ulrich!"

The two fell over giggling, rolling off the bench into the moonlit grass.

…

"She's out rather late tonight."

"I know." Mr. Ishiyama sipped the mug of coffee cradled in his hands. "It's not a school night."

His wife planted her hand on her hip and glared at him. He smiled. She'd picked that up from her daughter. "And you're not a little concerned about who she's with?"

"No." She raised her eyebrows. "She and Ulrich just went out for ice cream. She'll be back soon."

"I thought we were going to tell her to stop seeing him. I thought you didn't like her associating with him."

He put down the cup and stood up from the kitchen chair. "I didn't give him a fair chance. He's a nice boy. And he's very fond of Yumi." He slid behind his wife and wrapped his arms around her waist. "Besides, if you recall, your parents didn't like me very much when we first met."

She smiled. "My father still doesn't like you."

"So, let's learn from his mistake." He squeezed her slightly, then let go. "Just trust me. These friends of hers aren't so bad."

Odd shook his head. "Oh, you're so bad."

Sissi pushed her dinner tray out of the way. "Well, I didn't know who he was, I was only seven. I thought he was a police officer or something. Oh, Dad was so angry."

Odd chuckled and grabbed his long-empty tray. "How long have we been here?"

Sissi exhaled deeply and glanced at her watch. "Almost four hours."

Odd dropped their trays into the return basket. "We better get some sleep. Big day tomorrow."

Sissi lifted herself off of the bench and stretched out her sore muscles. "Yeah. I think I should talk to Aelita before I turn in. I imagine she misses Jeremie already."

"Right."

They weren't leaving yet. There was about a foot between them, but this changed as each shifted about nervously. Odd moved first, leaning in slowly. Sissi followed, each one moving hesitantly closer. They were almost touching when, as if by unspoken agreement, each one shot back with an embarrassed look. Odd tried to smile. "Uh, good night."

"Good night." They walked off toward opposite doors, a little faster than was necessary.

The park ranger stifled a yawn and waved the blue station wagon through. The couple in it smiled at him, the man waved back. The blond boy in the backseat looked bored. The ranger couldn't blame him—nothing exciting ever happened this far up the mountain. They'd had a lost hiker a few weeks ago, but he was found easily enough. The ranger turned to his partner, who was about to say something, when the telephone rang. Shrugging, the other ranger picked up the receiver.

"Hello? Hello? Ranger Station 11, here." The man still standing by the door looked at him quizzically. He shrugged and set down the receiver. "No one there."

On top of the log building, the radio dish started to move, sliding slowly back and forth. Looking. Ah. It stopped. There he was.

…

"Are you almost ready?"

Odd blinked. "Hm?"

Ulrich stepped through the door. "It's two thirty. You don't want to be late."

"Oh, yeah, I just…do you think my hair's okay? Maybe I should do something different with it?"

Ulrich smiled. "Yeah, I could, like, call Milly and Tamiya, and we could, like, braid it, or curl it, or…" he dodged the paperweight, but just barely. "What's with you man? I mean unless the last couple years have been some sort of crazy dream, you've been on dates before."

"Yeah, it's just…"

Yumi smiled softly. "Different."

Sissi looked up into the mirror and sighed. "Yeah. I can't remember feeling this nervous before."

"Well, nervous is good." Yumi ran the brush through Sissi's hair. "Just so you know, this is the only girly thing we're ever going to do together." Sissi nodded solemnly. "We're not going to have a sleepover, and we're not going to talk about boys…"

"We are talking about boys." Yumi gave the brush a sharp tug. "OW!"

Yumi smiled. "Knot."

Jeremie was almost out of breath. They'd been climbing for four hours, and the exertion and altitude were starting to make him a little dizzy. Still, it built character, as his father kept reminding him every twenty meters or so. His mother looked back occasionally. "Honey, maybe we should stop for a while."

"Oh, come on, we've only got a little further until we reach the ridge. It should be really beautiful this time of year."

"But, I think maybe Jeremie should—"

"No, Mom. I'm fine, really." If they stopped, he'd just prove to himself that he couldn't do it. Not that it didn't seem tempting. But he kept climbing. When they finally reached the outcropping that ran around the long side of the cliff, he was almost out of breath. It was beautiful, though. A thought entered his mind, unasked. He wished Aelita was there to see it with him. Come to think of it, he wished Ulrich and Yumi were there to help him up the rocky half-trail in the first place. He scoffed to himself. What good was he? They did all the work anyway. Now he was just proving how much he needed them. Jeremie the coward. Jeremie the nerd. What a joke.

"Jeremie, are you coming?"

He glanced back. He must have been standing there for a while—his parents had already put their backpacks on and were ready to go back down. He shrugged. Maybe he could make it back to the campsite before his limbs fell off.

Sissi watched Odd coming from a long way off. He didn't really look any different. He shuffled his feet a little, and glanced nervously in her direction like she was in his. She didn't know why she'd expected him to look different. As he approached, she smiled and swallowed a mouthful of sticky afternoon air. "Hi."

He smiled, more meekly than she had ever seen him. "Hey. You, uh, you look great."

"Yeah, you too."

He nodded. "So, where are Ulrich and Yumi?"

"I…I don't know. They haven't called, or anything…"

"Well, uh, the movie's going to start in about ten minutes, maybe we should…

"Yeah, we should definitely…" Sissi didn't move. "Yeah."

As the prey and the two larger humans descended the steep path, the fox watched from the underbrush. They were going back to their habitation. Good. The others would be ready by the time they got back.

…

Jeremie set down his backpack against the overturned log by the fire pit and groaned. Every muscle in his body ached. As he craned his neck back, he thought he heard a noise from the underbrush. A crack.

"Did you hear that?"

His mother looked up from the camp stove. "Hear what, sweetie?"

"I don't know, I thought I heard something from over on the other side of the tent."

His father shrugged. "Oh, don't worry, it's probably just an animal. I'm sure it won't bite. This time."

Jeremie frowned. "I'm going to go check it out…"

A wolf padded out of the brush. Jeremie almost jumped back. It wasn't just that he was scared—but he was. The animal seemed wrong, somehow, like it was watching him. Not them. Him.

Jeremie's father stepped in between the dog and the campsite. "It's all right, he probably just smelled our food."

His mother stood up. "Honey, maybe you shouldn't—"

"It's fine. They're more afraid of us than we are of them." Jeremie's father arched his jacket over his arms, trying to make himself appear larger, and flinched forcefully toward the wolf.

The animal bared its fangs and leapt up. In the split second before his father hit the ground, it occured to Jeremie what was wrong. Its eyes were red.

Odd was about to put his hand in the popcorn, but pulled back awkwardly when he saw Sissi's was already fishing around in the tub. He almost blushed, and turned back to the screen. The movie wasn't very good, but at least they both seemed to think so. Odd hoped he looked bored instead of nervous.

Ulrich stopped in mid-step, Yumi stopping a few paces ahead and looking back. "What is it?"

He wrinkled his eyebrows. "Did you ever feel like there was something important you forgot to do?"

She shrugged. "Not really."

Ulrich shook his head and fell back into step beside her down the hallway. "Anyway, how do you think Odd and Sissi are doing?"

Yumi smiled. "Pretty much like we would have at their stage."

"Yeah, they do seem…oh, of course!"

"What?"

"Jeremie wanted me to check in on Aelita while he was away." Ulrich turned back on the ball of his foot and took the few strides to Jeremie's door.

"…calm. There has to be some way to contact their cellular phones…"

"Aelita?"

The virtual girl's eyes shot up. "Ulrich? Yumi! Where have you been? I've been trying to think of ways to contact you for almost two hours!"

Yumi sprinted toward the computer. "What is it, Aelita, what's wrong?"

"Xana's activated a Tower. And it gets worse."

Ulrich leaned over the other side of the desk. "How much worse can it get?"

"I've tracked the signal he's using. It travelled along the phone lines to a ranger station in the mountains."

Ulrich squinted. "That doesn't make sense. What's in the mountains…"

Yumi said it before he did, but barely. "Jeremie!"

Even if he hadn't just spent the better part of his day hiking, Jeremie's legs would have given out long before. Fortunately, he had the excellent motivation of half the forest coming down on him. He'd guessed what was happening when he saw the first beast's eyes. His suspicion was confirmed when the second animal—a buck deer, antlers pointed downward, attacked from the side. His mother was closer, but it charged straight at him. By then, the wolf had left his father alone and was circling around to cut him off. Shouting for them to stay in the tent, he started running for the trees. He didn't know how long it had been since he'd looked back.

Yumi slammed her thumb down on the phone's talk button as she ran. "They have their phones off!"

Ulrich shrugged, panting. "Of course. They wouldn't keep them on in the theater!"

"We need backup. If I run the supercalculator, that means we only have one fighter to help Aelita!"

Ulrich dove down the sewer entrance. "Well, who are we supposed to get, Herb and Nicolas?" As Yumi landed, he recognized the look in her eyes. "Oh, no, Yumi, no way…"

"He knows a lot more about computers than I do. It's his job. He'll be able to learn how to use the supercalculator in no time."

Ulrich opened his mouth to argue, then clamped it shut and started running toward the skateboards. Yumi flipped her phone back out and pressed number five on her speed dial. It was hard enough skateboarding through the sewer, let alone with a cell phone in one hand. "Come on, come on, pick up…Dad! It's me. We have a big emergency! How…really big! The biggest one we talked about!" Ulrich shot a glare back at her. He hoped she knew what she was doing. "Meet us at the factory."

Jeremie grabbed the stone outcropping and, for a moment, he was just hanging. He felt the first animal, probably a fox, sink its claws around his calf. Screaming out loud, he shook off the predator and lifted himself up onto the rock shelf. Daring to look down, it seemed as if every living thing on the mountain was chasing him.

He had to keep moving. The slope ahead of him was steep, steeper than they'd climbed earlier that day, but it was nothing compared to the alternative.

Yumi's father dropped a coat around his shoulders and headed for the front door. His wife peeked out from the living room. "Dear, what is it?"

"I have to go."

"What? Where? And where's Yumi?"

"I…I'm going to pick her up."

"Wait a minute, don't think you can just…" He had already slammed the door behind him.

…

Every muscle in Jeremie's body was burning. He just wanted to fall down off the steep, rocky slope and rest. As he tried to push ahead, he had to fight back tears. Why did this have to happen to him? Ulrich or Yumi or Odd would have found a way out of this by now—he just wasn't any good at thinking under pressure.

The next rock he put his hand on slipped out from under him and skittered down toward the climbing horde of animals. He jerked to the other side, and felt a dull recognition of pain in his ankle. He kicked out with his other leg as a badger, far ahead of the other creatures, leapt up at him. His foot connected, and sent the hefty animal flopping back into a column of smaller beasts, sending them rolling bck down the hill. Had the situation not been so ridiculously dangerous, Jeremie would have smiled. That gave him an idea.

Odd held his arms limp at his sides. At this point in the date, if you listened to what the movies had to say on the subject, he was supposed to "yawn" and casually lift his arm across Sissi's shoulder. He'd done it before, with mixed success. Yep, he thought. That's what you're supposed to do next.

Ulrich winced as Yumi's father climbed awkwardly down the rope that led into the belly of the factory. Yumi smiled. "You know, we usually just swing down."

He grimaced as he hit the floor. "Not at my age, you wouldn't."

Ulrich turned his eyes to Yumi and shrugged. She sighed. "Come on. I still have to show you how to work the computer."

He ducked into the elevator and, as it descended, looked around nervously. When the lift stopped at the lab, Yumi guided her father out and to the control chair as Ulrich descended to the scanner room. "Okay, I'm going to get you started by sending in Ulrich. Just watch what I do, and I'll explain as we go, all right?" He nodded hesitantly, eyes darting between the screens and the keyboard. "Okay. Transfer—Ulrich."

Jeremie was practically laughing to himself as he ran. There was no way this was going to work. Even if he could get back up to the tree before they caught up with him, there was no way he'd be able to do it.

When he rounded the last cluster of evergreens, he saw it—the big, forked tree that his mother had said looked like rabbit ears, so old that the only remains of the forest below it were green saplings. Its roots held it at an odd angle, like slender threads. Threads that only needed one good tug before they snapped. He could hear the clicks and shrieks and howls of the approaching horde. It felt like he'd been running forever. He shook his head as he scrambled up the rocks to get behind the tree. There was no way this was going to work.

Ulrich flipped onto his back, rolling the cockroach into the purple stone wall that blocked their escape. He spun around and stabbed the robot before it had time to right itself. "Yumi, we need you in here now!" He grabbed Aelita by the waist and dove down behind a rock before the crab's lasers hammered over their heads.

Yumi slipped into the scanner tube. "All right, Dad, I'm ready."

In the lab, Mr. Ishiyama shook his head. "I…I don't know if I can do this."

"No, don't think that. It's easy. Just do like I showed you."

"What if it doesn't work? What if you get vaporized or…who knows what else?"

"Dad…you can do this. I know you can."

Mr. Ishiyama swallowed the lump in his throat. "Transfer—Yumi."

As the animals came up the relatively bare slope behind him, Jeremie lifted himself onto the rock that was pushing out on the tree. He tried to laugh, but the sound came out as a cough. He'd been resting on this rock almost five hours ago when they'd stopped to take a drink. When the first wolf was almost within striking distance, he pushed all his weight against the tree and, with a sickening crack, it slid free of its fragile perch.

The momentum of his body sent the trunk careening across the loose pebbles beneath it and, as he grabbed at the rock to keep from sliding down after it, Jeremie watched the tree hit the first animals. They thought they were closing in, so they'd let all the largest species pull out in front. That was a mistake. Bears and deer and wolves felt the full impact of the dead wood and rolled back, sending the smaller animals scattering in all directions. As the last creatures tumbled away from the living landslide, Jeremie stood up, barely able to breathe, but grinning.

As the curtain of light passed over the mountainside, his last thought was that tomorrow, when his mother asked if there was a special girl in his life, he'd tell her about Aelita. Not everything, of course, but all the things that made sense. It didn't seem so embarrassing now.

…

They all turned out to say goodbye this time. As his mother watched Jeremie walk off from the cluster, waving and giggling, she turned to her husband. "You see? And you were worried he wouldn't be making friends."

He was about to speak as Jeremie trotted up. "Hey Mom, Dad. We ready to go?"

His father ruffled his hair and slipped back into the car. "I have to say, kiddo, I didn't really know if you'd like spending the weekend out in the woods, with no phones, no computer…"

Jeremie bounced into the back seat. "Are you kidding? This wilderness stuff is easy."

The other four watched the car roll off down the street, Jeremie waving casually from the back seat.

When the old sedan faded around a wooded corner, Odd turned to Sissi. "Well, we better get going. We've got a movie to get ready for."

Ulrich winced. "Oh, yeah. About that…it was Yumi's idea. I wanted to…" Yumi giggled and, before he could finish, had him in a headlock. "I tried to get her to change her mind, but she…" He broke free and Yumi slapped him upside the head as lightly as possible.

"We can come with you this time if you want." Yumi offered.

Odd looked sideways at Sissi and smiled. "No, I think we'll go it alone." They trotted off toward the dormitories, hands occasionally brushing against each other as they walked.

Ulrich offered Yumi his hand. "Walk you home?" She grinned and slipped her fingers around his as they crossed the street, headed toward Yumi's house. "You know your dad did pretty well back there."

Yumi nodded. "Yeah, he did, didn't he?"

"I'm not saying we should make him a permanent member of the team, or anything."

Yumi smiled. "I know."

"Just, maybe he'd be good to have around. For emergencies."

Yumi chuckled. "Right."

"We're not going to give him the code, though."

Yumi wrapped her arm around Ulrich's waist as they walked and pulled him closer. "Of course not."


End file.
